Many problems at work (and outside it, at home, among friends and family) start the same way: someone builds an assumption on the information they have. They believe it is correct and complete. It is incomplete.
The core problem is that the human brain does not register that what it is looking at is missing pieces. It believes the picture, forms judgements on it, and makes decisions on it.
Why the brain does this
If something is missing, surely the brain should notice. Unfortunately, no. People by nature dislike incomplete things and will do the impossible to complete them. One of the things that happens below awareness is filling in the gaps in the facts and stories in front of us. And because the picture now looks whole, we start deciding on it.
Some of those decisions are serious. You may wrong the person in front of you. You may shake their trust in you. You may cost the company or the client real money. And more.
The Quran puts it plainly (An-Najm 53:28): "Indeed, assumption avails not against the truth at all." However clear the assumption looks, it is never a substitute for the truth.
What it costs
I have seen it many times. A manager tears into an employee because he assumed a mistake. The employee swallows it, because you do not argue with your manager, but the trust is gone. Two colleagues argue because one of them has an incomplete picture, and when the full story comes out he refuses to admit it so he does not look wrong. Salary deductions, HR warnings, even dismissals, all built on "incomplete facts".
You see someone leave early and decide on the spot: lazy, does not want to work. Ask, and you may find he has been in since dawn fixing a system that broke overnight. You see a manager shouting at an employee and assume the employee did something terrible, when the manager missed his department's targets through his own mismanagement and is pinning it on the person who was just following orders.
Four questions before any decision
The simplest habit is to ask yourself four questions before you decide:
- Is everything that reached me a fact?
- Is there another side I have not seen?
- Did I hear one party and not the other?
- Did I build part of these "facts" on experience from earlier situations?
If the answer to any of them is yes, you are exposed, and you need to verify before taking a decision you may regret. And remember: the prayer of the wronged is answered.
Sometimes your assumption turns out right, because you know the people, the company and the environment you work in. That still does not make you infallible. Verify first.
Have you fallen into this before? Or do you feel you were once wronged by someone who did?
If you lead people and want to work on how you make these calls, you can send me a note. No commitment, just an honest conversation.